An Air Canada flight attendant was violently thrown from the plane that crashed into a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night — and was still strapped into her jump seat when she was found, sources said.
“It’s a complete miracle,” the woman’s daughter, Sarah Lépine, told Quebec outlet TVA Nouvellas.
“At the moment of impact, her seat was ejected more than a [300 feet] from the plane,” Lépine said of her flight-attendant mom, Solange Tremblay.
Solange Tremblay has been identified as the Air Canada flight attendant who was ejected from the plane during the crash at LaGuardia Airport in Queens on Sunday night. Obtained by NY Post
The mangled front of the doomed Air Canada flight remains at LaGuardia Airport. obtained by NY Post“They found her, and she was still strapped into her seat. She had a guardian angel watching over her. It could have been much worse.”
Tremblay suffered multiple injuries, including a broken leg, her daughter said.
Air Canada’s Flt. 8646, which originated in Montreal, had collided with the truck on Runway 4 around 11:40 p.m., striking the middle of the vehicle and sending the two Port Authority officers inside flying from their own seats, sources said.
The fire truck had been en route to an emergency on a taxiing United Airlines flight when it was struck by the Air Canada jet.
Both Air Canada pilots were killed in the crash with the truck, while dozens of passengers, crew members and the two cops were injured.
Tremblay suffered a broken leg and multiple other injuries. Solange Tremblay/facebook
The flight attendant was still strapped into her jump seat (circled above on the plane’s seating chart) when she flew out of the plane. Air CanadaSources said preliminarily, both the plane and fire truck were given clearance by air-traffic control at the same time to use the runway.
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Air-traffic audio captured the very moment the plane — which can weigh as much as 84,000 pounds — t-boned the truck on the wet runway.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop!” the controller pleaded to the fire-truck driver. “Truck 1, stop, stop, stop! Stop, Truck 1! Stop!”
“Jazz 646, I see you collided with the vehicle. Just hold position. I know you can’t move. Vehicles are responding to you now.”
The plane still sits on the runway at LaGuardia after the crash. Getty ImagesThe controllers told another incoming plane — a Frontier flight bound for Miami — to go around as the crash unfolded and asked whether they wanted to return to the ramp.
“We got stuff in progress for that, man, that wasn’t good to watch,” Frontier pilots said.
“Yeah, I tried to reach out to ‘em … And we were dealing with an emergency, and I messed up,” the controller replied.
Investigators examine the wreckage. REUTERS“No, you did the best you could,” a Frontier crew member said.
Delta Flt. 2603, en route from Detroit, was also told to avoid the airport. That flight eventually landed at JFK, according to FlightAware.
The Air Canada plane was traveling more than 75 mph at the time of the crash, a source told The Post.
The National Transportation Safety Board will determine whether bad communication from air traffic control is to blame.
